


under the old oak tree

by gaypasta



Category: IT (Movies - Muschietti), IT - Stephen King
Genre: Canon Universe, Fluff, Friends to Lovers, M/M, Post-Canon, Tooth-Rotting Fluff
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-12
Updated: 2020-05-12
Packaged: 2021-03-02 22:21:24
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,315
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/24154219
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/gaypasta/pseuds/gaypasta
Summary: Following the blood pact, following That Summer, following finding love in his life, Ben Hanscom has an insightful chat with Richie, and together, they explore the ends of the Universe.
Relationships: Ben Hanscom/Richie Tozier
Comments: 5
Kudos: 19





	under the old oak tree

**Author's Note:**

> mal @nohomohank literally waited far too long for this and I am sorry. anyway.. trashstack rights!

The first time Mr.Nell caught them up to no good they were building a dam. Ben, with a mind naturally affiliated with the physics behind engineering, even as a boy, instructed a scrawny Bill and a thin-chested Eddie where to put the sticks and logs and the bits and bobs until half of the Kenduskeag bubbled over nests of nettles and turned the summer-dry Barrens into wetlands. The second time Mr Nell caught them up to no good was some years later, after That Summer. They weren’t up to no-good, not like last time (although there had been no ill intent, the minor flooding of the Barrens caused by nought but childhood curiosity). The six of them were rifling through the Dump (Eddie had been diagnosed with terminal runny-nose and was under house arrest), looking for some neat things to put in the Clubhouse, which had been expanded since their limbs grew seemingly overnight. Derry Dump is closed on Sundays but apparently the Derry Police Department was not and they all ran off with their arms empty of all but dirt. The third time Mr Nell caught them up to no good was when Richie Tozier and Ben Hanscom were peeped kissing under the heavy foliage, near where they had built the dam some three years prior. 

The blood oath had held its ground. They could feel some strange interconnectedness between them. All of them. Ben even thought it was a little scary sometimes, although he wouldn’t dare admit it. Sometimes he swore he knew what the others were thinking. Not in the natural way of predicting a long-time friend’s thoughts, like knowing Eddie was thinking about how he was going to explain a new scrape of roadburn or a new bruise to his mommy after falling off of his bike. That would be normal, that would be kinder. This was more unsettling, teetering more on the supernatural side than Ben felt entirely comfortable with.

Right now, Ben is walking down through the Barrens. The sunlight flashing blindness across his vision through the irregular break in the dense trees. It’s a Sunday morning. The sun is warm but the air is cool, still recovering from the summer chill of a cloudless night. He hadn’t worn a sweater today - in fact, he hasn’t worn a sweater since winter. Sure, some kids still puffed their cheeks when he walked past, some broke their gaze of his stomach peeking over his jeans to their own pouch with a look of relief that over the years Ben had learned to mean -  _ ‘well, at least I don’t look like  _ that’. Water off a duck’s back. Ben has just finished his paper route - all of West Derry. It took the better part of two hours but he was all the better for it. The coins he had been given upon his return to the Printing Office are making happy jingling noises with every careful thump down the steep downhill into the heart of the jungle. Face rosy with exercise and happiness, he contemplates plans to excavate more of the clubhouse. Richie has just hit another growth spurt and watching him crawl into the space is starting to resemble someone trying to fold a map in a hurry.

Ben can sense someone is here. He can’t hear any rustling of leaves being separated to make room for bodies in nature’s space, nor can he hear any snapping of twigs beneath expert feet. Feet which have trekked possibly every inch of this wilderness. Eddie was always good at navigating, he always had a sense for what way to go no matter how deep they had gotten. Over time, Eddie’s navigation skills were called upon less and less as everyone began to recognize bunches of forget-me-nots, oddly shaped bushes, fallen trees, even discarded junk served as landmarks. The half-buried Coca-Cola bottle meant you were seven minutes South of an embankment, which if you were eager enough to climb, would spit you out somewhere between the Train Tracks and Neibolt Street. The pair of rocks with moss beneath the ancient pussy willow tree served as Mike’s route home, bringing him to the edge of the old Ironworks. The ancient oak tree carved with a time-worn ‘ _ M + K 4ever’ _ served as a sign to walk carefully and tune in their ears: the Bowers gang dip down here to smoke.

He can feel displacement in the air… and his gut told him to veer left at the wild blackberry bush and head down towards the heart of the Kenduskeag, so he did. 

As he gets closer and closer, the image of one of his friends kneeling down to the shallow off-stream of the river grew clearer in his mind’s eye. The trickling stream rejoins the Kenduskeag after a quarter mile or so - but despite the dry summer, it never ran dry and it made home to a boastful population of frogs. The sun glitters diamonds into the trickling stream, reflecting refracted rainbows onto the face of his friend. Eyes, if light like Beverly’s, explode into brilliant spotlights in the sun, if dark, they burn a blessed amber, like the moment just before an Atom bomb explodes inside a mug of hot cocoa. 

As he draws nearer still, the image in his mind’s eye grows ever clearer. Long limbs crouched down, the dried dirt on the white of canvas shoes cut into the gravel of the shoreline. Boney knees scuffed with layers upon layers of scabs and scars from many falls from bikes, off of trees, slipping on the frozen Kuduskeag during winter. Knees marred a strange scabbed white. Arms that are long and pale but pleasantly dotted with freckles, only jumping out during the sunny weather. A face dusted with the pinks of fading sunburn - no freckles there. 

  
As he clears the bramble bushes from his view, his mind’s eye was perfectly correct. By the stream sits Richie, poking his finger around the streamwater with a furious curiosity. Richie must’ve sensed his presence - not seconds later after Ben noiselessly pushes the bramble bush aside Richie raises his head, a smile already plastered on his face.

  
“Well hi-there pardner.”

“Hi, Richie. What are you doing?” 

“Why, I’m makin’ beans, Haystack. You wanna pull my finger?” 

“I’m good.” Ben steps out of the bush and into the rocky shore. The beachfront - Beverly calls it. The trees split open for the entire length of the Kenduskeag. During the day this is the best spot for getting sunlight, whether it be for reading, drawing up some sort of plans, bird-spotting for Stanley or for ‘catchin’ some rays’ for Bev and Richie. At this time of the morning, the sun is barely visible through the small sliver of sky that Ben can see but it casts its brilliance tenfold nonetheless.

Richie shrugs. Suit yourself. Ben sits opposite him, looking into the water that Richie’s so pointedly examining. The pebbles crunch under his weight. Richie answers his question before he asks it. “I saw some frogspawn here a few days ago. I wanted to see if they hatched yet.” 

“Do tadpoles hatch from frogspawn?” 

“I’unno. We should ask Stan, he would know, right?”

Ben agreed. Stan would know. Ben knew this, on a level deeper than instinct. “Are they here?” He asks. 

Richie shrugs again, pulling his finger from the stream and stretching with a series of pops that no healthy fourteen-year-old should be making. “Nah, they must’ve carried downstream. Or else got eaten by piranhas.” 

Ben glows at the memory. They used to play explorer. The Barrens a vast jungle, the rumblings from the chest of lions and tigers vibrating in the air, the foreign spiders and creepy-crawlies spreading goosepimples where they walked. The Kenduskeag a roaring river, with plump angry piranhas who lept in the air, razor-teeth snapping at their feet along the rocks they used to jump across without getting wet, without being carried downstream by lightning currents down to a 100ft crushing waterfall. “Poor guys,” Ben says. 

“Wanna make mudcakes?” Richie asks. It’s too dry to make mudcakes. Richie changes his question, knowing that Ben was going to point out the flaw of his plan. “Wanna shoot marbles? I don’t have my fancy ones, though.” 

“Sure,” Ben says. Simple enough, but the joy of feeling included, of being wanted, being worthy of someone’s time was a babbling brook in his heart. He listened eagerly to it as it filled his bones with joyous chatter. It spoke in tongues. Tongues of instinctual languages you learn coursing through your bloodstream as a baby. Mommy, I love you! Daddy, I love you! Scooby-doo, I love you! 

_ My friends, I love you!  _

It screamed inside him every single day.

_ My friends, I love you so damn much! _

It was relentless.

_ Richie Tozier, I love you! _

It  _ is _ relentless. 

The pair shot marbles for a while. Richie was great and gave pointers to Ben, who had never played until he made friends. The clacking of the balls rings out sharp as silver in the windless summer morning. The clacking met with the joyous jingling in his pocket rhymed out a perfect adolescent soundtrack. Even when Richie decides he’s had enough, he sings some rock n’ roll song and air-guitars to himself whole-heartedly. 

They run out of things to do, but on a such a nice day sometimes it’s nice to just sit at the beach of the Kundeskeag and waddle your feet in the gentle current. Richie’s mud-caked shoes were tossed haphazardly behind him. Ben’s sneakers were sitting on a particularly flat boulder, untouched by moss (half a mile to Witcham Street) with his bleachwhite socks rolled up and stuffed into them. The water glitters as he makes ripples with his feet. Every so often, a small fish swims past. It makes Ben wonder how many of them swim too shallow, how many end up beached to drown in the air? He feels Richie wonder, how great it must feel when they swim to the ocean. All rivers lead to the ocean, and that’s where he’s going. He’s gonna make it big someday, just like Richie. Ben prefers Richie’s optimism, if not idealism. 

He feels the question Richie asks before he asks it, but he waits patiently for it anyway. “Say,” Richie begins, “What do you wanna do when you’re big? Big enough to get jobs and move out, I mean.” Richie poses this as casually as he can but his eyes meet Ben’s with a burning ember, not set alight by the sun this time. 

Ben considers this question seriously. He’s thought about it, sure. An architect. He wants to design beautiful buildings, buildings that are criticised by experts but revealed by dreamers. He thinks he could do it, he reckons that it’ll be hard, sure, but it’s just math. Just math and physics and other things which come second-nature to him when he’s creating structures. There’s beauty in crafting something that will sit along a skyline, that will create homes for people, places where people feel safe. Large windows where people can look out and admire the world. Stairwells crafted with the highest quality stone, with intricate handrails that are smooth, new - polished, but feel old, feel like your childhood home when you would run up the stairs after school clutching onto the handrail. 

“I want to be an architect,” Ben says. Richie nods seriously in response. The silence webs on, patient and comfortable. Ben watches Richie kick the water casually, scaring some of the fish away, their scales reflect panicked light as the rush downstream. Richie’s glasses are sitting in his hair and served to push back the bits of hair which always seemed to fall into his eyes. Everyone teases Richie about his hair, that he needs to get a haircut because he looks like a stray dog. ‘I dunno,’ Ben thinks, ‘It looks kinda nice.’ It seemed to match his personality, wild and always pushing boundaries. His brow is glistening with a light sheen of sweat, and the burn on his cheeks looks to have pinkened a little. Richie doesn’t seem to mind, and neither does Ben. 

“I want to do funnyvoices,” Richie said. The tone called surprise to Ben because normally, when discussing his future, Richie was loud and unashamed of it. He was going to will his fame and success into existence by the power of his voice alone. If anyone could do it, Richie could. This voice sounded unsure, it possessed a heaviness of vulnerability that Ben had never heard Richie carry, not like this, not since That Summer. Ben could feel it in his chest, the familiar feeling which wasn’t quite his own, but the colours paint the same picture: Richie was doubting himself. Even worse: Richie didn’t think he was  _ good _ enough. 

Ben suddenly became overwhelmed with emotion. How could Richie think that? Of all people? Richie Tozier? Richie Tozier who crawled under the porch of Neibolt and into its basement, who gripped Silver tight when being chased by a big fat werewolf, who always made them laugh even when they were facing what could have been the end of their lives, who hugged Bill for all he was worth when he found Georgie’s raincoat, who had spoken for Ben after that first time in Neibolt, getting so blind-sighted by rage for Ben and Eddie’s health that he punched his longest-term friend in the mouth. 

Ben didn’t-couldn’t speak. The notion that Richie was feeling like that had rendered him speechless. Ben had been there, hell, Ben had lived there for his entire life. But that was the house that he had built, and Richie was welcome in all of Ben’s homes - but not this one. None of them belonged there, in that house. Even Ben started to believe he didn’t belong there and he was slowly moving out. Knick by knack, he was moving out of the feeling of not being good enough. He might always have the foundations, he can’t dig them up and rid himself completely of its land, but he will never camp out there again. 

Richie continued to splash in the water. Quicker now. The splashes of water splashing up his legs and wetting both of their cuffs. He was growing restless with the silence, awaiting Ben’s response and Ben knew it. He willed himself to say something, anything, but he couldn’t. All he could do was reach for Richie’s hand, look at his frownful face and hope that he could understand. Hope that by some benevolent force, Richie could understand all of Ben’s responses, his passions, his love, that failed to be spoken into existence. 

Richie squeezed Ben’s hand in response. He understood, but only a little. Ben could see his eyes brighten, but his face still dark, still at war with himself. The words Ben could say could help. He could speak, speak a wonderful, lively monologue about how much he loves Richie, really, truly loves him, how Richie’s energy - his life - brightened up the world in a way that was more than metaphorical. Richie’s liveliness was corporeal - Ben could touch it when they are besides, when they are miles apart, in the face of death and hell, at the end of the world. 

Ben reads poetry. Ben writes poetry. Ben has read more books than any grown adult would consider reasonable or healthy for his age. Ben has a vocabulary which would warrant him Maine State Scrabble Champion. There were still, in all of his searchings, no words to describe how he felt for Richie Tozier, and how Richie Tozier felt back. 

The scar on Ben’s palm burned. 

It struck him suddenly, the only way to grab Richie Tozier’s attention - truly grab it - to make him understand was this: Ben Hanscom grabbed Richie Tozier by the front of his shirt, and kissed him hard. 

Richie didn’t move. Richie was still against Ben. Even as Ben pulled away, Richie stared at him with a vacant expression on his face. His glasses shifted lopsided in his hair. His feet stilled in the water, and then Ben noticed how the Barrens had stilled too: the water no longer trickled along the stream, the fish no longer reflected shards of light from their scales as they stayed motionless in the river; the junglenoise has stopped all its motions, the crickets no longer chirped, the birds no longer sang for mates, the scuttlebugs and the earthworms lay motionless as corpses in the dirt; the breeze which shifted the light between the trees in and out of Ben’s stinging eyes had stilled. It was just Ben and Richie, alone in the stillness of their own private Universe, under the old oak tree, together. 

Richie began to cry. Ben’s tears streamed steadily down his face. Richie cupped his hands over his eyes and rested his weight on Ben’s shoulder. There they sat, in their privacy, until their tears dried and the words which had still gone unspoken, continued to hold the rotation of the Earth still, just for them. 

The words were there, hanging in the very stillness of the words. It painted the world in their colours; it stalled the motions of the universe and even the cosmos, way up there, where the Turtle lives, stood in its respect and waited patiently for the two to let the world resume. Ben tried to say it. He tried to say it. He tried to say it again, and again… and again. 

“Richie - you know I-” But he couldn’t. The words weren’t enough. An otherwordly force stopped the words dead in their tracks because it knew that it would not be enough. There was too much love, devotion, time, shared experiences, too much of Them, to fit into any amount of words in the human languages that would do it justice. It wouldn’t be enough. No words would ever be enough. 

“I know,” Richie said. “I feel the same.” Richie shifted his other hand into Ben’s. Their scars ached beautifully as they met. Richie kissed him. Richie kissed him again. And again. And again. With every kiss, the world spun into furious action. He kissed him at fifteen. He kissed him at seventeen. He kissed him at twenty-seven. He kissed him at thirty-four. He kissed him at forty. He kissed him at fifty. Sixty. Seventy. Eighty. He kissed him until the Kenduskeag dried up into the earth. He kissed him until Derry crumbled back from where it was born. He kissed him as nations were rebirthed and dismantled. He kissed him as the legend of IT, even in the whispers of creation, faded from memory. He kissed him until the universe folded in on itself and it was them and the Turtle. He kissed him until the only things left in the universe, besides its creator, was Love. 

The Turtle rolled its eyes. “Puppy love.” 

They are fifteen, in Derry, Maine. They are kissing in the Kenduskeag, underneath the old oak tree, with the world spinning on its axis a little better than it did before. They had seen the end of the universe, and at the end of it, running through the space of every atom of the universe, even in the deepest pits of the cosmos, within the oldest fossil in the deepest part of the earth, even in the webs of time during wars and famine, there is Love. 

When Ben and Richie tried to explain all of this to Mr.Nell some minutes later, when he yanked Richie by the back of his shirt and asked him what exactly, in God’s green earth were they doing, but Mr.Nell didn’t seem to get it. ‘Whatever,’ Ben thought. ‘I don’t really get it either.’ He rode home, side-by-side with Richie with the pleasant feeling that nothing had changed. Things were as they always were, as they are, and always will be. 

**Author's Note:**

> @georgiedenbrough on tumblr


End file.
